We present a real-time differential phasefront detector sensitive to better than 3 mrad rms, which corresponds to a precision of about 500 pm. This detector performs a spatially resolving measurement of the phasefront of a heterodyne interferometer, with heterodyne frequencies up to approximately 10 kHz. This instrument was developed as part of the research for the LISA Technology Package (LTP) interferometer, and will assist in the manufacture of its flight model. Due to the advantages this instrument offers, it also has general applications in optical metrology.
@article{arxiv.1203.4478,
title = {Real-time phasefront detector for heterodyne interferometers},
author = {Felipe Guzmán Cervantes and Gerhard Heinzel and Antonio F. García Marín and Vinzenz Wand and Frank Steier and Oliver Jennrich and Karsten Danzmann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1203.4478},
year = {2012}
}